Where Evil Waits (6 page)

B
YE,
K
ARA,”
one of the kids said, giggling. “Have fun.”

Sasha wasn’t sure who had spoken and didn’t care. All he could think about was Kara Montgomery and the flush of color in her cheeks. Her eyes fell the length of his body, snagged for a split second on his erection, and the color in her cheeks deepened. Andrew Chandler called her name and it was then she moved, stepping through the open door of the tack room in sheer defiance.

Sasha licked his lips.

“Kara,” Chandler said again. “We were just kidding. You don’t have to take the dare.”

You don’t have to let this lowlife touch you.

Sasha stepped forward. Hatred seeped from every pore. Once, when they were both younger, he and Andrew had stood together at the rail of the mating pen, watching one of the Montgomery stallions fuck a Chandler mare. In a sick sort of way, it was a turn-on to watch such an elemental act of sex—the stallion sniffing the mare and getting agitated, doing the dance and mounting her, sinking his teeth into her neck. This was a big-money mating,
so when the stallion’s cock finally came out of the mare oozing a thick stream of semen, the handlers whooped and cheered, and Andrew high-fived Sasha. For one moment in time, they’d been equals.

But not now.
You fucked up, rich boy,
Sasha thought
. Now she’s mine.

Andrew moved but Sasha stepped into his path. “Stop treating her like a baby. She’s fifteen. She knows what she’s doing.”

“Kara?” Andrew said.

She drew herself even taller. “Seven minutes. But no longer.”

Sasha’s blood sang through his veins. Seven Minutes of Heaven with the princess of Montgomery Manor. Wonder what her old man would say to that. Wonder what
his
old man would say to that, come to think of it.

No, he didn’t need to wonder about his old man. Sasha knew exactly what he’d say. “She is not the one for you.” In other words
: You’re not good enough.

He brushed that thought away. He’d learned early on that he couldn’t live up to his father’s dreams for a son. Only Stefan could do that and Stefan was gone.

So, fuck you, Dad.

Sasha came to the door, feeling Andrew’s eyes on his back. Kara stood in the center of the room, probably counting down the seconds. Cabinets and shelves lined the walls, all stashed with riding equipment. In one corner a bunch of saddles were lined up on pegs, and in the other, a ring of barbed wire the size of a tractor wheel lay in a coil on the floor.

He turned to close the door and Andrew’s voice stopped him.

“Hey, lose the crop, asshole,” he said, and Sasha
looked at his hands. He’d forgotten he was carrying anything.

He chuckled. Stupid shit. If he wanted to use a crop on her, there were a half dozen more hanging on the wall three feet away. But he tossed the crop toward Kara and watched it land at her feet. He smiled and turned to Andrew. “In case she wants to take a ride.”

He shut the door in Andrew’s face, turned to Kara.

Six minutes left.

The explosion knocked Kara back a step.

“Let’s go,” Varón said. He had Kara’s arm before her heartbeat evened out. He pulled her up the bank and into the woods, not quite running, but moving with fast, long strides that had Kara jogging to keep up on the uneven terrain. Aidan skirted through the woods beside them and they moved parallel to the lakefront, fifty feet above the bank and about seventy-five yards from the backs of homes that lined the water. The sound of raging flames trailed into the night behind them, the scent of gasoline tingeing her nostrils. Lights came on in windows along the way and minutes after the fireball exploded, the sirens started, wailing past them on the road above.

They kept up the pace for what seemed like miles, Varón’s gait growing uneven, as if he had a cut or splinter in his foot. Still, he kept them moving and finally they came to a spot where the lake narrowed and a bridge spanned the banks. Kara stopped, her lungs heaving.

“Mom?” Aidan said.

A stitch cramped her side. “I’m fine. But we need to cross the lake.”

Varón rubbed his thigh. “We don’t need to cross—”

“Listen to me,” she said, panting. She was in okay shape
for a thirty-something mom, but the sprint along the lake bed had taken it out of her. She turned to Aidan. “Uncle Louie’s fishing cabin. It’s only a few miles from here, but it’s on the other side of the lake. We can stay there.” Even in the darkness, she could see Aidan cringe. “Honey, he’d want us to use it. He’d want us to be safe. Damn it, Aidan, he’d want us to find out who killed him and your father.”

She started toward the bridge but Varón said, “No.”

“This is what I planned, Mr. Varón. You don’t have a say.”

“The hell I don’t. You hired me to keep you safe. I’m not doing it in some fishing cabin I’ve never seen before.”

“No one ever uses it. We’ll be out of sight.”

Nearby, too nearby, something caught her ear. It was the low hum of an engine. She glanced around but it was too dark to see anything.

“We’ll do this my way,” Varón said, and pulled her back into stride.

“Hey,” Aidan said.

A spear of alarm got Kara in the chest. She tried to pull away but Varón’s hand tightened on her wrist. Suddenly, it didn’t feel like they were being helped anymore. It felt more like they were being kidnapped.

“Let me go,” she said, but he didn’t. He ducked beneath a tree limb, then snapped the next one off in his hand, limping, but moving fast, dragging Kara.

Aidan sprang, landing on Varón’s back, and the pillowcase fell into the pine straw.

“Let her go,”
Aidan roared, on him like a bronco.

Varón bucked him off and gave Kara a jerk. Her back hit his chest, her right arm wrenched behind her in a V. One big hand fell over her mouth and the position alone held Aidan back in shock.

“Enough,” Varón snapped. “I don’t want to hurt your mother, but if you force me, I will.”

Stars danced before Kara’s eyes. She hung her weight on the forearm across her chest but it was like hanging on a tree limb. He crushed half her face beneath his hand, barely letting in air, and in the back of her mind she realized he could snap her neck in two seconds flat. Right in front of Aidan.

“Let her go,” Aidan said, and Kara could hear the terror in his voice. He would be brave, he would try to take on Luke Varón. But he was just a boy. He’d lose.

She went still. Dear God, don’t let this bastard hurt Aidan.

“For Christ’s sake,” Varón said, his heart thudding against her back. “I could have killed either one of you ten times over tonight if that’s what I wanted. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just doing the job you hired me to do.”

Somewhere in a distant corner of her mind, she heard the engine again, as if it had been waiting. “Pick up that bag,” Varón said to Aidan, then hauled Kara another thirty yards, this time up the incline of the bank, straight to a car waiting in the darkness. Aidan followed. He would be on good behavior as long as Varón threatened Kara. The son of a bitch knew how to keep a kid in line.

A second man got out of the car. He came around and opened both passenger-side doors. Varón said to Aidan, “Get in front.” Aidan balked and the second man pulled out a gun.

“Mmm—” Kara cried.

“Tell your son to do as he’s told,” Varón growled against her ear.

She managed a nod to Aidan and he climbed in. Varón pushed Kara into the backseat, loosening his grip only
enough to let her move and piling in after her. The other man slammed the front door on Aidan and jogged around to the driver’s side while Varón reached below the seat. He grabbed her wrist and hit it hard, then hit his own.

Handcuffs.

Aidan locked eyes with Varón, then glanced at the handcuffs. A ribbon of terror unfurled in Kara’s belly. The irony of trying to escape a killer by being kidnapped by Luke Varón was too great to contemplate. She tugged on her wrist, but he was ready for it. There was no give.

“When you settle down, I’ll take them off,” he said without looking at her. He kept his eyes on Aidan. The second man put the car in gear and began inching through the woods with no headlights, and Kara tried to think enough to note details. Fifty-ish, wearing a black ski cap and dark jacket, even though it was the dead of summer. His face was smudged with black and he wore long sleeves and dark gloves. She didn’t recognize him.

The car engine revved and they bumped out of the woods. Varón shut his eyes, as if the ordeal had been hard on him as well. The bastard. She commanded herself to think.
I could have killed you ten times over already.
That much was true, she realized. If he’d wanted to harm her, he’d had plenty of opportunity before now. In the alley or in her bedroom. Not to mention that he’d been in the house alone with Aidan before she got there. He might have easily killed him in his sleep while she was out buying a phone to line up a meeting with Jay Kemp or stuck behind a tow truck in her neighborhood.

I’m just doing the job you hired me to do.
Pray, God, it was the truth. She watched the darkness go by, trying to imagine why he was taking her request to such extremes.
He was supposed to be grunt labor. Besides a payoff, he had no stake in her actions.

I want to know why,
he’d said. It was all he’d demanded.

A terrifying hunch took root in her brain. “Are you part of it?” she asked.

“
You
called
me
, remember?”

“But this is beyond what you were hired to do. You must have a reason.”

She could barely see his face in the darkness. “It’s not what I intended, either,” he said, seeming surprised by his own admission. “I give you my word, neither of you is in danger from me. Your husband’s death is of interest to me, that’s all.”

“What do you mean?”

He glanced at Aidan and lowered his voice. “Not now.”

“Now,” Aidan said. He turned around in his seat, facing Varón. “Damn you, why do you care about my father?”

“My mother used to tell me not to ask questions unless you’re sure you want the answers.”

Aidan scoffed. “You don’t have a mother. You were raised by wolves.”

That got a faint smile from Varón. “Her name is Katrin. And she would tell you to respect your elders.”

Aidan wasn’t distracted. “What is it you don’t want me to hear about my father? That his company was corrupt? I knew that already. Everybody in Atlanta knows that. That he cheated on Mom? That’s old news, too.”

“Aidan,” Kara said, but he went on.

“I want an answer: What was my father to you?”

Varón took a deep breath. “A hit,” he said. “I was hired to kill him.”

L
UKE WATCHED HIS WORDS
sink in. Kara and Aidan were speechless.

Fine. Luke needed time to think, too. Things were happening too fast. His head pounded and his thigh hurt like a son of a bitch. After nothing more than a few minutes of conversation with Kara Chandler, everything he thought he’d known was in doubt. The man who’d killed Andrew Chandler and Elisa Moran wasn’t dead.

That changed everything.

Kara Chandler’s eyes drilled into Luke. “You didn’t kill Andrew. You couldn’t have. You were in custody when he was killed.”

“That’s right,” Luke said. At least, that was the story. “Custody” had actually been the FBI field office.

“How do you know that, Mom?” Aidan asked.

“Because when I was preparing the case against him, I tracked his movements. He entered the U.S. nearly a month before your dad died and was taken into custody three weeks later. He was in jail when your dad was killed.”

“The lady did her homework,” Luke said, and looked
at Aidan. “I was hired to kill your father, but I didn’t get the chance. I want to know who did.”

“Don’t like the competition?” Aidan jeered. Luke might have chuckled if the stakes weren’t so high. If Andrew’s death wasn’t the result of a drunk driver, then the operation with Collado could have holes they’d never suspected. “I want to find your dad’s killer and so do you. That puts us on the same team.”

“On the same team where?” Kara asked. “Where are you taking us?”

“Not to some fishing cabin,” he said. “Out of the way. Where no one can find you.”

They drove north, into the foothills of Appalachia and onto narrow mountain roads. After a few minutes on a winding, gravel lane, lights came into view and then the house itself. It was an angular, three-story lodge-style building with cedar siding and deep decks surrounding the upper two stories. It had windows everywhere, floor-to-ceiling, with skylights all across the front. Luke had insisted on the big windows and the skylights.

Knutson hit a button and the garage door opened. He pulled in and nested the car next to the Carerra someone had driven back earlier, then went around to get Aidan.

“What are you going to do with us?” Kara asked, and Luke saw true fear in her eyes. He wished he could say something to make it go away. But a cartel hit man wouldn’t bother.

“Come on,” he said, and tugged on the handcuffs to pull her out of the car. Knutson nudged Aidan up the stairs and Luke sent Kara up behind them, climbing the stairs at her back. At the top, the door opened and kitchen light flooded the top of the stairwell. A dark head bobbed past the doorway.

Maddie. Ah, Jesus, they’d sent Maddie.

They walked into the kitchen and Luke kicked the door closed behind him. Knutson tugged off his black cap and tossed it on a desk, revealing a shock of thick white hair. Kara pulled back, eyeing Knutson with distrust and probably scouring through everything she knew about Luke Varón to try to place Knutson as one of his associates. She wouldn’t be able to. Luke’s identity was what the FBI referred to as deep cover: No matter how far authorities dug, they would only find the history the Bureau had created for him.

He started across the kitchen, pulling Kara to a bar stool at the island. He could think of a scenario or two in which he wouldn’t mind having Kara Chandler and a pair of handcuffs in the same room. This wasn’t one of them.

Luke produced a key from his pocket and Kara lifted their wrists so he could unlock the cuffs. He didn’t.

“Aidan,” he said, not taking his eyes off Kara, “explain to your mother this wouldn’t be a good time to turn stupid.”

“Mom—”

“Are you threatening me, Mr. Varón?” she snapped.

“I’m stating a fact. When I threaten you,
querida
, you’ll know it.”

She held his eyes but a swallow convulsed in the hollow of her throat. A slender throat, pale and smooth, and leading to things beneath her blouse Luke had already seen. That ought to be the farthest thing from mind, but standing this close, catching the same sweet whiff of perfume that had captivated him in the alley just a few hours earlier, he found it difficult keeping his mind on the reason she was here.

Maddie had no such issues. She shot him a perturbed glare, then slipped around behind him, carrying a large canvas bag.
“Señor?”

“Estoy listo para tú,”
he said. “I was just making sure my guests don’t get any wild ideas.” He tossed a glance to Aidan. He was ninety percent sure his actions with Kara had been harsh enough that the boy wasn’t going to do something stupid. Ten percent not.

He stuck the key in the lock of the handcuffs. Kara rubbed her wrist.

“Comienza con el niño,”
Luke said to Maddie.

“Start
what
with the boy?” Kara snapped, and Maddie unzipped her bag. Glasses, a comb, and a couple pairs of scissors.

“Darken him up and cut his hair,” Luke said. “Give him a tattoo. You ever wanted a piercing, kid?”

Aidan looked dumbstruck. Luke picked up Kara’s macramé bag and dug inside. “Madelena will give you both a new look. It’s what you paid me for, right?” he said, coming up with the stack of bills. Twenty thousand dollars. She’d been ready. He went back into the bag and found a wig and makeup. She wasn’t completely unprepared, just mostly. He gave the wig a once-over and dropped it in the trash can. “Madelena can do better. You’re first, Aidan. There’s a bathroom back there.”

Aidan looked at his mother, who nodded. “It’s what we were going to do anyway.”

He didn’t like it, but followed Maddie to the back. Luke waited until they were out of sight, then picked up the pillowcase. Andrew’s sunglasses, Penny’s scarf, and what else? She said she’d been getting anonymous gifts for a year, and cards.

He emptied the pillowcase onto the granite island. Knutson came within earshot and positioned himself so he could see.

“Tell me about these things,” Luke said. But he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

Kara stood and placed the items in a certain order, lining up one of the greeting cards with each. She picked up a pearl necklace on the far left. “This was the first thing I got. It came two months after Andrew died—there are dates on all the cards. I found it wrapped in gift paper and left on my front porch.”

Luke looked. A standard greeting card, like those that would come in a box of stationery. The picture on the outside was a pastoral watercolor of a horse grazing in a field with wildflowers at its feet. On the inside, just a single word hand-printed in angular, black capitals: TRUTH.

“ ‘Truth?’ ” he asked.

“I don’t know. I didn’t understand, either, but after a while I let it go. Then, a few weeks later, same thing—a box on my doorstep. It was this, a woman’s watch.” She pushed it toward Varón, then handed him the card. It was like the first, except the horse was a different color and he nipped at grass growing beneath a split-rail fence. It had still probably come from the same box. Inside, the card read, TRUTH.

Luke frowned and picked up the next three cards, one after another, examining each gift. A pair of leather gloves and a similar card, with the same handwritten word. A man’s tiger-eye ring and another card. An engraved ink pen and card. All of them: TRUTH.

“And you have no idea who is leaving them or what the message means,” he said.

“No. Aidan always thought it was a secret admirer confessing his crush—
truth.
And he laughed and called him cheap because none of these gifts is new,” she said, pointing to the black gloves. Luke had noticed: They
were leather, but worn at the edges. The pearl necklace was broken; someone had tied a knot in the string to keep the beads from falling off. The pen even had a message engraved on it.
All my love, Gina.

“Weird gifts to get from a secret admirer,” Luke said.

“Weird, yes. But until I received Andrew’s sunglasses, I didn’t consider the possibility that their owners were dead.”

“Were they all delivered to your front door?” Knutson asked.

She blinked, as though she’d forgotten he was there. “I found the sunglasses and card on my car at the grocery store. On Monday.”

“What store?”

“Harry’s, on Powers Ferry.”

Knutson would find out if there was video of that parking lot.

“And Penny’s scarf was tied to Aidan’s bike handles. He and Seth were at Seth’s neighborhood pool.”

Christ. Whoever was leaving the gifts had been keeping an eye on both of them.

“And you never noticed anyone following you, calling you at strange hours, like that?” Luke asked.

“Only the gifts and the text messages.”

Maddie came out of the bathroom, looking for Kara.

“Okay,” Luke said, and pushed the tokens and cards back into the bag. “Go get your new look. The last thing I want is to blow up a boat and arrange for your bodies to be found, only to have the two of you re-surface somewhere.”

She looked at him, a dubious tilt to her head. “You’re very thorough, Mr. Varón.”

“That’s why you hired me,” Luke said, but knew Kara
Chandler was too familiar with cops to be snowed too easily. He’d have to remind her that he was, as she put it, a resourceful thug and not a Federal agent suddenly scrambling to save an undercover operation.

He’d have to make sure she stayed wary of him.

He went to Maddie’s stash and sifted through the boxes of hair color.

“Use this,” he said to Maddie, reading the box. “E-twenty-three, ‘dark chocolate.’ ” He shot a wink at Kara. “I told you: I’m partial to brunettes.”

Luke left Maddie to handle Kara, a job that was certainly within her capabilities despite the meek demeanor she’d presented. He picked up the pillowcase and Knutson followed him down half a flight of stairs to a study with windows from floor to ceiling. He poured himself a deep shot of tequila, drained it and poured another, then opened the French doors to the wraparound deck. He rubbed his thigh.

“The leg okay?” Knutson asked, joining him on the balcony.

“It’s fine,” Luke said, though they both knew he was lying. A chunk of bone had come out with the bullet, but another chunk hadn’t. Most of the time, it didn’t show in his movements, even when it hurt like hell. But a sprint through the uneven terrain of the riverbank had got it going.

“You’re scaring that poor woman to death,” Knutson said.

“She needs to be scared. She doesn’t know what she’s into.”

“Do you?”

“No,” Luke said honestly. “But I know more than I did
when you rigged the boat. The man who killed Andrew Chandler and Elisa Moran is still alive. He’s the one sending those gifts to Kara and he’s probably the one who killed Louie Guilford. John Wolff was part of it—he copped that guilty plea in exchange for money—and Wolff’s wife is missing. Dead.”

Knutson went to stone. “I think you’d better catch me up.”

Luke did, as much as he knew, from Kara’s receiving the sunglasses to going to Penny Wolff and then Louie Guilford, and to the text message she’d received threatening Aidan just a couple hours ago.

“How is Aidan?”
Knutson repeated, and Luke turned on Kara’s cell phone. He forwarded her messages to his computer, while Knutson called headquarters. This was going to require resources outside what they had in place for Collado.

Luke booted up a desktop and put in the security and clearance codes, then stuck in a flash drive. A moment later, the computer gave a series of dings as the messages from Kara’s cell phone arrived. Knutson came up behind him and Luke opened up the files. “The first message came via text a year ago, on the day of her husband’s funeral,” he said. “It was a picture of Chandler in his coffin.”

“Someone at the funeral, then.” Knutson made himself a note on a piece of paper from his wallet. There would have been hundreds at the funeral of Andrew Chandler. They were a well-known family. But they’d check everyone. “Pretty doubtful he signed the guest list, though.”

“Kara deleted that message, but maybe the tech guys can recover it from the phone,” Luke said. “She said she didn’t recognize the number and got no answer when she
called it. After a while, she wrote it off as someone being vindictive.”

Knutson hummed a note and Luke opened the first of the text messages Kara hadn’t deleted, the one that came eleven months ago, right after John Wolff’s death. It was a photo from the newspaper,
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
from an article about the riot at Floyd Correctional Institute. “When this picture came and had the same text message as the first—
Look what you’ve done—
she got suspicious and held on to it, but still had no idea who’d sent it.”

He clicked to the next message, the one from tonight with the picture of Louie Guilford.
How is Aidan?

“It’s more than just a guilt trip now,” Knutson said. “He’s upped the ante to threatening her kid.”

“Find out what the APD knows about Guilford’s shooting. It was a long-range shot with a hunting rifle so they’re probably running competition rosters and shooting clubs. Gotta be someone with training.”

Luke moved on to the picture of Penny Wolff. He took the photo he’d seen on the tiny iPhone screen to the eighteen-inch monitor.